I don't know who I thought I was kidding with the treadmill affirmations. The thing is a glorified coat hanger--a three hundred dollar coat hanger that puts weird stretch marks in my sweaters. People like me shouldn't own treadmills. I've come to realize- and this hit me in the form of an epiphany- that my entire adult life has been a number of ambulatory transitions from one sitting place to another sitting place. I had this moment of clarity where I tend to entertain most of them: squat down and helpless on the john. I was sitting on my sofa, where I had been for the past three hours, and then I stood up, and walked down the hall, and closed the door, and sat down again. And then I realized what I had just done, which is slightly different than just doing it.It's no wonder that the bathroom is where I have my best abstractions. When you're held captive for extended periods of time, you have nothing more that you can do but think. I once had the thought that it is because I am an American that I eat my breakfast cereal on the toilet, since it is a time saving measure. My Grandfather was a small business owner and had taught me to work smart, not hard. The epiphany that I had about my intermittent sitting led me to yet another about why it is that I dread going to work each morning. Subconsciously I understand that when I get there I will be standing up for nine hours straight. This should have been obvious to me before: people like me shouldn't work retail. We need office jobs with comfortable chairs in which we can recline and occasionally spin around fast in.Have you ever noticed how much domesticated dogs behave like their owners? My labrador likes to tiptoe around the yard sniffing when he poops, like he's reading doggie's digest. What a good boy.

Evolution is a strange thing to have overcome. By all rights, if a person is thick enough to get victimized by a treadmill, that person should probably die, or should at least get exactly what is coming to him. Indeed, I, myself, have been victimized by a treadmill. Thanks to my Mom’s moose-like instinct to charge through traffic, I arrived at the emergency room in record time and I did not die. I’ve heard that the white light you walk toward in death is tepid. I imagine it to be not unlike the warmth a person feels after they’ve accidentally peed a little bit. There was no white light for me. What happened to me was even better. I encountered fuzzy people for the first time. Let me explain. Recently I went on a vacation to sunny California for some much needed mental convalescence. One morning I woke early, and when I realized that I would never be able to fall back to sleep, I cursed La Quinta and went out to take a dip in the pool. I’m not able to move with the endurance I had when I was a kid. Even swimming from one side of a pool to the other is more difficult now. But I do have an advantage that I did not have when I was young. My eyes are so useless that it no longer frightens me to open them as I flail through cocktails of chlorinated piss and acid rain. But on that morning I had not anticipated La Quinta’s prolific concentration of the two, and I rose from the water furiously smearing the bite from my eyes. Unbeknownst to me, I popped up on the right side of the pool. I looked around at the world as it throbbed, and then in front of me, up at a third story window that caught my attention. I did not know if the woman in the window was fresh out of the shower, or if she had just finished with a man in her bed, but I do know that I stared too long. I couldn’t quite decide what the blur was that I was looking at until it suddenly ducked down and took up a cover, or possibly a towel, and darted off like a doe from a monster truck. Joke’s on her, though, because only you and I will ever know that I can’t see shit without my glasses. Except for fuzzy people. And that’s what you get from treadmill-induced concussions.

It has often been reported by shark bite victims, even those who have lost entire limbs to them, that they no longer fear their aquatic assailants. There is no trepidation in the memory of the blood, or the chilled daze, nor the desperate cry of a distant voice: "don't you dare die!" I saw a man on shark week back in 2011 who said he felt connected to the bull shark that took all the rear tissue of his left calf- like a part of it would be inside of him forever. And while I would argue that it is, without a doubt, the other way around, I must admit I understand what he means, for I feel that same innate connection between the treadmill and myself. It was eighteen years ago that I fell prey to the mindless wrath of my mother's Proform 330i. Seven stitches were required. More on that later.

Treadmills are heavy. Then again, so am I. I saw myself in the mirror the other day, as I was trying to squeeze into a pair of pants I swear I fit into comfortably last year. I cursed at my waistband, which, on both sides, wedged a lump of fat up and over the normal spot it sits when I'm naked. That's when I decided it had to end.I suppose I'm bitter. I thought when the weight was gone, it would stay gone. I got excited and bought new clothes (big mistake). Don't fit into them now. It's not that I don't appreciate that fat keeps me warm during the winter time. But clothing in a size smaller than me would, too. If I had the choice, I would rather freeze to death. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. I got a treadmill.